Chapter 69

It's really hard for the stone bear to imagine how the North American Indians without iron or steel made all kinds of tools out of hard rock if they didn't see it with their own eyes.

After seeing it, the stone bear really admired the patience of these people.

Although they have a lot of iron tools in their hands, they still use the old method when making stone mills.

This method is simple, but also time-consuming. They smash stones with stones, and then grind them with abrasives made of obsidian, which is the most common high hardness tool used by North American Indians.

This makes the stone bear very helpless, but also a little egg pain. These guys obviously have iron tools in their hands, but why are they still making stone tools in this primitive way?

Shi Xiong asked several clansmen, and the answers given by these clansmen were almost the same

Hammers, chisels and other tools in their hands are obviously used to deal with stones, but they are reluctant to use them for fear of destroying them in the process of using them.

For these people, the iron in their hands is a family heirloom. How can it be used in such a "dangerous" work of making stone tools?

In this regard, the stone bear said he did not understand.

But there was nothing he could do.

Fortunately, these guys didn't delay the stone bear's business. Even though they still used the original way to make stone mills, it took only two days, and more than ten pairs of stone mills with a diameter of almost two feet were made one after another.

Then the stone mills were moved to the newly made carts, and the tamed bison pulled them to the salt mountain.

North American Indians had no wheeled transport before. Even if they came into contact with European colonists, vehicles did not spread among their tribes.

In this regard, the stone bear once again said egg pain.

Therefore, when casting tools, he specially cast more than ten pairs of thick bearing shells.

With these bearings, even if we can't get the bearings out for the time being, we can add boiling butter to the bearings, so that the wooden axle can rotate freely, and the basic conditions for building a four-wheel bullock cart are solved.

Perhaps the Indians had invented vehicles with wheels a long time ago, but they couldn't solve the problem of wear between the wooden axle and the frame. In addition, the early Indians were all hunting people, and they didn't need cars to pull a lot of things, so the transportation tools with wheels gradually lost their market.

Before the appearance of bearings and industrial grease, the wheels of vehicles were fixed with the axle, and the axle rotates with the wheel. In this way, the joint between the axle and the frame will produce huge wear.

If the axle is worn, it's better to say that it's much easier to replace the axle than the frame. But the problem is that the axle and frame are made of wood, and the friction is mutual. In the process of axle wear, the frame will also wear.

North American Indians didn't know how to smelt steel before, so even if they had vehicles, they still couldn't solve the problem of friction between wood and wood. In addition, vehicles didn't have much use for North American Indians, so vehicles were not popular in North America.

Now it's not the same. In order to make steel, we have to have transportation tools with heavy load. Otherwise, how much coal and iron ore can we transport in a year with human power alone?

Therefore, when smelting the first batch of steel, whether it's OK or not, the stone bear prepared the casting bearing bush early.

After the bearing bush is cast, it can be directly inlaid on the frame to make direct contact with the axle made of wood.

There are many excellent hardwoods in North America in this era. Among them, red oak and walnut produced near Dawu Mountain are excellent hardwoods. The hardness of red oak is greater, which is suitable for making axles. Although the hardness of walnut is not as good as that of red oak, walnut has high quality toughness and earthquake resistance, so it is the best to make wheels with walnut.

At this time, red oak trees are everywhere. A big oak tree can make many excellent axles. No matter how hard the axle is, it can't be as hard as a two centimeter thick iron bush. As long as the bearing bush can't be worn out, it won't make much difference to replace the axle.

Moreover, building an ox cart is not much more complicated than building a Quyuan plow, so Lao Mu's family, together with more than 20 helpers, built two four wheeled ox carts in just two days.

Of course, this kind of ox cart is the one with a turntable on the front axle, that is, there is a wooden turntable on the top of the front axle that can turn 360 degrees. The turntable is installed on the load-bearing axle below, and the upper layer of the turntable is the frame.

In this way, when turning, the turntable can move freely, so that the four wheeled ox cart can turn at a small angle.

As for the pulling animals, it is natural to tame the bison with infinite strength. Although there are not many bison tamed in the tribe now, more and more bison will be tamed in the future. It's nothing to pull a cart out of two cows.

The two newly built ox carts immediately became the most famous stars in the tribe. Both adults and children want to take a ride in the ox carts and feel the taste of traveling without walking by themselves.

It's absolutely no problem for this cart to pull a thousand kilos of goods. Even if it's pulling people, it can pull seven or eight adults at a time.

A pair of stone mills weighs about 200 Jin. Ten pairs of stone mills and two ox carts can be pulled from the tribe to the foot of the small salt mountain at one time.

Under the arrangement of the stone bear, the grass shed is also set up at the foot of the small salt mountain. At that time, these ten pairs of stone mills will be placed here, specially used to grind the salt blocks mined from the salt mountain.

In addition to the grass shed where the stone mill was placed, there was also a grass shed for boiling salt. The stone bear was originally used for the big iron pots made by the clansmen.

Originally, Shi Xiong made 20 big iron pots for the tribe. This time, because he wanted to boil salt, he had to come out with five big iron pots.

This kind of big iron pot is not small. It's about 20 jin for one, which is about the same size as the later Liuyin iron pot.

Now these iron pans have been pulled over, and the mound is on the newly built earth stove.

But you don't need coal to boil salt. Just pick up some firewood from the woods is enough to boil salt.

In the early morning of this day, almost all the people in the tribe went out, and even the people who cultivated and sowed suspended their work. The news that the guardian is going to teach the people how to make salt has spread all over the tribe in the past two days, and all the people will not miss this opportunity.

Although food is very important, it is undoubtedly more important than salt